


The Pun Battle

by Blikdelie



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Identity Reveal, Marinette being competitive, Pun Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24950722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blikdelie/pseuds/Blikdelie
Summary: Marinette just needed some sleep. What she didn't need was Adrien, smiling at her with his sunshine smile.“You look purrfect today, handsome boy," she blurted out.Her brain caught up a moment later, making her freeze. Marinette paled, her eyes wide blown with horror.“Don't look bad yourself, handsome girl!” he winked and turned away from the girl, leaving her wondering.Just what if the best way to Adrien's heart led through puns? Cat puns, specifically. For she has totally had the best teacher.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 23
Kudos: 247





	The Pun Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Woah! Has it really been two years?  
> To tell the truth, I'm here for "one way or another", which is just hanging there for over two years already.  
> I hope it will be coming soon.  
> And this idea had been lying in my disk for who knows how long. Please enjoy!)

Marinette wasn't even sure how it started.

She personally blamed Chat Noir.

That blond boy with his stupid cheerfulness and his stupid smile and his stupid puns that always made her feel safe and protected. That was definitely his fault. Bad influence, as they called it.

She spent so many nights bantering with him during patrols that it didn't take her any effort to pick up his pace and pun back. The nights became darker and patrols longer to the point when for Marinette sleep deprived became a normal state.

So, she shouldn't be too surprised, when her brain shut out during a yet another (failed) conversation with her crush, and her tongue reacted on its own and gave out a pun.

“You look purrfect today, handsome boy.”

Her brain caught up a second later. Marinette's eyes grew wide with horror and she paled.

What did she just say?

Was it weird?

It definitely was weird.

Oh no, what if Adrien thought she was weird? What if he never wants to talk to her again? Then she would never be able to marry him and have a house and...

“Don't look bad yourself, handsome girl!” he winked and turned away from the lockers.

Marinette felt her face heat up.

Just what was it? Did he flirt back? Did it mean anything? What if that had mean something? What if he actually liked her back?

Stop it. It's too early to talk about it.

She shook herself, gaining some composure.

He flirted back. So what? He wasn't the one to start it.

Maybe she should wait for him to flirt with her first? Then she might be able to make something out of it, right?

Yeah, that was a good plan.

Marinette took a deep breath and made her best effort to shut out her feelings for the boy and focus on the task at hand.

Marinette was competitive. And she didn't give up on the idea once she got it, no matter how ridiculous it was.

This was a challenge.

Not a simple one.

But it made the whole thing a lot more interesting.

Challenge accepted!

\-----

“Hey, are you a camera? Because I keep smiling whenever I look at you.”

Marinette winked. Adrien grinned.

Oh, he could play this game!

Of course, his heart belonged to his lady, but it never hurt to play flirting with a good friend, did it? Friends totally did that. He and Ladybug were friends and partners, and they kept flirting all the time. Given, he was the one doing most of the flirting, aaand he totally would like them to be more than friends.

Anyway. Friends did that. It was a given. Period.

So he went for it. Whenever Marinette striked, he answered. Whenever she punned, he punned back. Adrien didn't even suspect she had this side in her.

She was actually really punny. Furreal.

There was one strange thing though.

Being the baker's daughter, one would expect her to use bread puns.

But, for some reason, instead of them, she came to his battlefield. She used mostly cat-puns. And it was especially flattering.

He gave up on finding out the reason after the third day. It simply didn't matter.

What mattered now was that he couldn't let her outpun or outflirt him.

That was a challenge.

His pride was at sake.

Challenge accepted!

\-----

"Hey, Marinette! Have you done your maths homework yet?"

She didn't miss a bit.

"Nope, but I'd love to do you."

Yet again her brain was the one to catch up a moment later. She stiffened, her pencil drawing an ugly smudge across the page. Was that too much? The girl risked a glance up at the blond. He was staring at her in disbelief, blushing furiously. Alya and Nino both went unnaturally silent, observing the two of them curiously. That definitely was too much. 

"Yep! Sure!" She squeaked, bolting from her seat and all but throwing her copybook into Adrien. "You can have it! Gotta go to the bathroom, bye!"

And she rushed out the room, breathing heavily.

Today's study session wasn't going as planned. The worse thing was - her friends were still sitting in her room, waiting for her to come back. Awwww, that was awful! Why would she even say something like that and to Adrien, no less! That thing was definitely getting out of control.

She needed to either stop doing whatever she was doing, or get prepared for the banter better. She huffed. "None of the Dupain-Cheng had ever backed away from the challenge," she declared, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

"That's right," Tikki chirped, "though you are the only Dupain-Cheng in this house, and you've failed to confess to Adrien for two years now."

"You got my point," Marinette grumbled.

The girl squared her shoulders and marched out from the bathroom. She was going to fight for her future, for the hamster and for Adrien.

"Are you okay?" the blond bid worriedly, when she entered the room.

"Fine," she smiled. "Not as fine as you though."

Adrien gulped. Marinette smirked.

\----

Adrien felt himself blush. It happened more and more often lately. Marinette was savage. She was eating him alive, and here he had claimed to be the cleverest cat in Paris. Bullshit. No matter the reason, she wasn't going easy on him.

He couldn't lose on his own battlefield. Pick-up lines and cat puns were his thing, and he was losing cat-astrophically.

Cat-astrophically. He should save this one.

He scribbled the word on the paper he was currently holding.

If he was going to win this, not a single idea should come unnoticed.

The boy checked the time. It was about time he met ladybug for patrol. He called for his transformation and got ready to jump out the window, but the paper on his table caught his attention. He shouldn't waste precious time on patrol. He could come up with something else during it.

Chat Noir carefully folded the piece and tacked it into his pocket.

\--------

Ladybug was already on the scene, sitting on the edge of the roof, her legs loosely dangling in the air.

"Looking mewvelous as ever, my lady," he greeted.

"Wanna take meowt?" she countered without thinking.

Chat sputtered. He didn't expect it to happen here as well. Not when Marinette had been giving him the hard time at school. He was going for patrol to relax.

"Sure!" he squealed.

Ladybug snickered. "Relax, Kitty, I'm just training."

Wow, okay, that, that made sense. No, wait. That made no sense at all.

"Training for what?" he clarified, finally making a move to sit next to her.

"To… ah, well," she sighed, "guess I need some help after all."

She tapped her yo-yo, taking out a piece of paper with something scribbled on it. A lot actually. The paper was filled with her neat handwriting, that left him with some tingling feeling. Chat ripped his attention away from her handwriting and focused on what was actually written on the paper.

It was filled with cat puns and pick-up lines.

It suddenly became very hot up here. Why was it so hot in October, anyway? He gulped, making out three exact lines that had hit him especially hard during the past week. That Marinette hit him with.

"Where did you get them?" he asked in a small voice.

"On internet mostly," she shrugged. "But I'm running out of sources."

Oh, the internet. Right, Marinette must have looked them up on the internet as well. Because the thought that Marinette would be… Chat considered the pigtailed girl beside him. No, that couldn't be true.

"Well, luckily for you, you just found one more source," he bid smugly, taking the paper he just-so-happened to take with him. This girl's luck was really incredible. "I have a list too, you know, and I'll give you this on two conditions. First, you explain what's it for."

"Fine," Ladybug sighed after a moment of hesitation. "You remember I told you about the guy I liked?"

Chat nodded stiffly.

"Well, apparently he isn't new to flirting and really enjoys cat puns." She paused, watching a slow grin spreading all over her partner's face. "Yeah, right, laugh all you want. I ended up liking a guy with cat puns, haha, how funny."

"Are you sure he is not me, my lady?" He pried, wiggling his eyebrows. "I'm quite pawsome with puns myself, you know."

"Keep dreaming, Kitty," she huffed, rolling her eyes. "So. I figured that…" the girl trailed off. What had she figured? What was her goal? Where was she going with this? She wasn't so sure. All she knew she had to win.

Chat, however, seemed to catch up.

"And you just had to prove yourself being better with the cat puns," he finished smugly. "Well, guess, I can't just leave you here. You're my pun-dawan, after all."

She leveled him with a flat stare.

"Well, pun-dawan for padawan… ahh, nevermind."

So, Ladybug wasn't Marinette after all. Because Marinette liked Luka, and not him. So that made it impossible for him to be the guy Ladybug loved. Well, that sucked.

"...tion is?"

"Huh?"

Ladybug raised a brow.

"The other condition. You said that you would help under two conditions."

"Ah, right!" He shaked his head, willing those hopes for Marinette to actually appear to be Ladybug, and be in love with him would go away. He didn't need them. All he needed now was to win that stupid battle tomorrow. And end this mess already. Because he was truly starting to take it too personally. "The second condition is – we share!"

He pointed at the paper in Ladybug's hand, which caused an amused chuckle from the girl and something about the almighty pun-ster Chat Noir wanting help from a mere peasant.

She didn't mind though, reasoning she had already used all of those anyway. His lady gave away the piece she was holding, while he handed her his. Eventually, they sat into their usual routine, laughing and bantering during the patrol. That was easy. That was nice. That ended past midnight.

Only when the boy came home, he could finally get what had been rubbing him wrong. The handwriting.

Ladybug's handwriting was very similar to the one on that Valentine card he had gotten all that time ago.  _ And _ it resembled the one of Marinette's from when she had left him those notes after Climatica had struck the second time. Adrien had to rub his face very hard to remind himself that Marinette was in love with Luka. Not him. Never him. And she definitely was not Ladybug. Because….

Aargh. He needed to focus. Those lines were not going to memorize themselves.

\------

Marinette was smiling triumphantly, looking at the piece of paper in front of her. That was the fullest list of cat puns she had missed so far. The one given to her by Chat Noir. Not a single one repeated anything she had used before, and she had over two hundreds phrases written down and used on Adrien. She felt some sort of admiration for the work Chat had done. She was sure she couldn't come up with a single line above what had been used already. Yet, here she had nearly four dozens of wonderful phrases. She totally should thank her Kitty later.

But now Marinette needed to focus. She had the whole night before the morning. Her homework could wait. And she was totally fine with skipping sleep. What really mattered right now was to whisk Adrien off of his feet. He would give in eventually, she knew it. He had already warmed up a bit. She already caught him blushing a couple of times. But that was not fast enough. She was losing patience, and she was short on ideas.

If anything, she was sure tomorrow was going to be The Final Battle. Which would either make Adrien finally fall for her or make Marinette finally concede defeat.

She couldn't keep this going for much longer. She would rather try something else. After all, this improvised competition had already helped her in a way. The girl finally could speak coherently around Adrien, and had stopped mixing her words a while ago. Maybe, just maybe, she could even confess her feelings for him soon enough.

Damn, she didn't believe she could win tomorrow, did she?

The brunette clasped her hands over her cheeks. She would do what she can. But now she needed to focus. Three cups of coffee on her desk nodded in agreement.

The girl took out a pencil and looked through Chat's list of puns. She never asked why he needed them, but she had to admit, he had the sense of humor alright.

She chuckled and encircled one of the phrases. This one was especially good.

\-----

Adrien was rubbing his eyes furiously.  _ No sleeping _ , his brain yelled. He got the whole package of phrases laid in front of him, however he could use none of them, for he had already heard each and every one of them. From Marinette. Hell, in the paper there even were the phrases that had left him especially speechless back when he heard them from the pigtailed girl. And they were  _ encircled _ !!!

The blond's tired brain failed to connect the dots. The truth was here somewhere. Close. Too close to ignore it anymore.

But it all broke against the idea of Marinette liking Luka.

Adrien knew there was one extra variable in this equation, but he couldn't quite place it.

The picture of Marinette and Luka skating wasn't enough to push it all away anymore. But Adrien held onto it. Because if he didn't, then all his world would somehow shatter.

He rubbed his face again. He shouldn't fall asleep. He should be prepared for whatever was coming his way tomorrow. And he had the feeling something was.

The last thing he remembered was Luka skating across his room with Marinette in his arms. Then Luka was gone, and Marinette turned into Ladybug and neared him cautiously. He was watching her dumbly. She bent down to whisper in his ear. "I'll crush him tomorrow. The guy I like. And you need to wake up. Adrien! Wake up!"

The boy bolted upright and faced one very disgruntled Nathalie.

"You're supposed to be leaving for school now. And you haven't had your breakfast yet."

The boy blinked owlishly, grabbed his backpack, throwing all of his belongings into it and rushed outside.

He just couldn't be late for his own execution today. It would go purrrfectly though, he knew that.

\-----

"Maman! I'll get going in a minute!" Marinette yelled. She hadn't slept a minute last night, so she was early for once. Early enough to help out in the bakery a bit. She had memorised each of the phrases Chat had passed to her. And now she was going to win for sure. Win what, she didn't know, but she simply couldn't back away now. She turned around to pick her schoolbag when the doorbell chimed.

"Welcome to the Dupain-Cheng's! What would you like to try today?" Marinette asked with a smile, turning around. And found herself nose to nose to a very disheveled Adrien Agreste.

"I would like to try you," he grinned.

Well, that was something she wasn't prepared for. Marinette eeped and stumbled backwards, her arms flailing comically.

"What's wrong, dear?" Sabine asked, emerging from the kitchen.

"Oh, hello, mme Cheng," Adrien bowed politely. "I slept in today, so I wanted to ask for one of your croissants… two! Two croissants, please!" He smiled brightly.

The tiny woman spared a knowing glance to her daughter, who was still bright red, and packed two parties into a small paper bag, adding two apple tarts. "On the house, dear," she smiled. "You are welcome to come for launch today too!"

"Maman!" Marinette squeaked.

"Thank you, mme Cheng! I'd love to!" The boy bid cheerfully. "We better get going now, right, myl..arinette?" He flashed another smile to her mother, while the girl just nodded dumbly.

\-----

What did he think he was doing! Marinette huffed. Coming early to the bakery and knocking her off her feet. And now making her walk with him to school.

She was too agitated to register that she was actually going to school with Adrien Agreste, the love of her life. All she could think of was the final banter that had finished without starting.

She bit furiously on the offered croissant, ignoring a soft chuckle coming from above. He didn't have the right! It now seemed that she had lost without starting. She couldn't come up with a comeback. And now she needed to find an opening.

She risked a look at the blond beside her. Something was not right with him today. His hair weren't styled flawlessly like always, more like they sticked out in every direction. And the weirdest thing – seemed that he couldn't care less. He was almost jumping from joy.

Marinette squinted at him in suspicion. The blond caught her gaze and flashed back a cheerful grin. The one that had always made her heart flutter like crazy. She felt a lump in her throat and a blush threatening to blossom. She willed it to fade away, shoving the croissant into her mouth.

"Say, Marinette," he bid, offering her the apple tart, "can I ask you a question?"

She hummed, taking a bite of the pastry.

"You don't actually like Luka, do you?"

The girl went straight into a coughing fit, spitting the tart out.

"What?" She croaked. "No! What makes you think that?"

What Adrien did was not a usual reaction though. He actually twirled around, emanating pure joy, and continued moving backwards, jogging. Marinette now was wondering if she was just fast asleep in her room, her tired brain offering her this over-cheerful projection of Adrien so that she could train properly.

"Why are you so quiet?" He asked with an amused smile, then smirked, bending down to her. "Cat got your tongue?"

That. That was the perfect opening for that phrase on Chat's list. The one that made her chuckle. The one she would win with. Adrien wouldn't know what hit him. And then they would marry, have three kids and a hamster. But all that would be later, as for now…

She stroke a pose, hands on her hips, and took a breath.

\------

Adrien was laughing. He laughed so hard! Apparently, not only had he found his lady, but she also had the same sense of humor as himself. Because out of all those phrases he had passed to her the night before, this was the one he had found the most hilarious.

It was just too good to be true.

So he laughed. So hard, his stomach hurt. And he still went on laughing. Upon looking up, he was met with Marinette's dumbfounded expression. She was blushing and looked like she was about to faint.

Marinette whimpered. That made Adrien sober up a bit. He lifted his hands in surrender.

"You… you win," he choked out. "I don't want to fight against you anymore. "Besides," he held out the pun list she had given him the night before, "this is quite useless, for you have used each one of them already.

The girl in front of him was staring numbly at the paper, processing something. It probably wouldn't have taken so long if only she had slept at least half an hour the night before.

And what for? Just to realise that he was still better than her, because he still had some ideas left when she had long ran out of them? Because it was the paper he had given her that won. The paper he had given… wait, there was some deeper revelation, aside from puns.

Marinette frowned in confusion, then felt herself dragged through the schoolyard.

"Don't worry, my lady. You'll figure it out eventually," Adrien whispered. "But we have classes right now."

With that he opened the door and led a very confused and sleep deprived Marinette to her seat.

It was approximately twenty minutes into the lesson when Marinette shot out from her seat, screaming and pointing to Adrien Agreste in accusation.

But even Alya couldn't get the explanation for that later. Well, nothing better than "I thought I saw a bug on his shirt, so I freaked out". But that never explained Adrien, who bent down laughing at the sound. Or why Adrien and Marinette went to have lunch at the bakery together that day. And all the days after that, to that matter.

Neither did Alya get an explanation for their thing with puns. Which came out of nowhere, and totally became a regular thing between the two of her friends.

Alya was about to make an investigation, when she got totally distracted by the fact that her ladynoir ship had finally sailed, so she finally decided to let her friends be. After all, it's not often that you make the love of your life to love you back.

\-----

"Hey, Marinette," the blond bid cheerfully as they entered her place for lunch.

"Yeah?" She wasn't sounding too enthusiastic upon all of today's revelations. Sure, she was ecstatic that Adrien was her Chat Noir, but it still needed time to register in her tired brain. And she would probably rather have a nap than lunch.

"Guess what my shirt is made of?"

She chuckled at that. Could he be less obvious?

"A purrfect boyfriend material!" He finished proudly.

Marinette found herself smiling. "Are you asking meowt?"

"Meowbe," he purred, coming closer. "I like you furry much, and I would love to spend all my nine lives with you."

Marinette swallowed hard. This was the moment she'd been anticipating for years. This was Adrien. But he was also Chat Noir, so if course he couldn't do that without puns. And she just realised that she loved them both.

"I love you too, Kitty," Marinette whispered, bringing her hands up to his face. "And I've been waiting so long for you to ask."

She raised on her tiptoes to meet his lips, but he didn't make a movement. Marinette opened her eyes to stare at the boy in confusion.

He was inches away, staring her dead in the eye. "Say it," he whispered. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

Marinette smirked. "Meow," she purred and closed the distance.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> English is not my native language, so I've been really struggling with puns. I thank Google for helping. :)
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> If you liked the story, feel free to comment and leave kudos.


End file.
